Back at the detail office, Sydnor asks what he's supposed to do when Prez is at the office, and Lester tells him to research using the assessment book to find other properties connected to Barksdale: "How do you know it connects to Barksdale, right?"

Montage, that's how! "You work off of what Prez gets you from the corporate charter documents. Whatever companies he links to Barksdale, or people connected to Barksdale, you look for those companies in the city land records." A guy comes out of a back room at some other office and meets Sydnor at a desk. In the detail office, Sydnor's not getting it, so...okay, long story short: Prez and Sydnor are on corporate paperwork duty. It's about as thrilling to watch as it would be to...do. But Prez is into it: "It's like a scavenger hunt." Sydnor asks what if Barksdale is so careful that they can't find his name on anything. Lester: "In this country? Somebody's name has got to be on a piece of paper. A cousin, a girlfriend, a grandmother, a lieutenant he can trust...somebody's name is on a piece of paper." Sydnor nods. "And here's the rub," adds Lester. "You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the fuck it's going to take you." Hey, we've heard that before!" Prez asks what Lester's going to be doing. Um, being super-cool?

That, and going down to the Baltimore City Board Of Elections, where he asks a clerk for campaign financial reports for the Western districts, or any citywide race. He wants both quarterly reports and lists of individual donors, and when the clerk warns him that "it'll be a couple hundred pages," he is not deterred in the least. When they're done, they can just flip those and use them for scratch paper.